The Senate Public Safety Committee today will discuss a bill — known as SB 26 — that would impose criminal penalties on inmates who use cell phones, and others, including staff and guards who smuggle the devices into prisons.

Despite a ban, some 10,000 smuggled cell phones were confiscated in California prisons last year — either directly from inmates or abandoned. In addition, 271 cell phones were seized from prison staff as part of a program of random, monthly searches known as “Operation Disconnect,” according to data from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

And I heard from Bill Mabie from Sen. Alex Padilla’s office, who tells me there was a “drafting error by legislative counsel on the previous version of the bill. We amended it today in committee to make the penalties for smuggling a cell phone to an inmate a crime (misdemeanor), punishable by six month in jail and a fine of up to $5,000 per device. This applies to anyone smuggling phones to inmates – employees or nonemployees. Believe it or not, when you add the state and local fees that are attached to fines, the $5,000 ends up closer to $18,000 per device.”